The Cigarette Industry Could Go Up in Smoke By 2021, New Data Reveals

The cigarette market will post a record loss of $7.7 billion by 2021 as the tobacco industry turns to heated tobacco and vaping, according to Euromonitor data.

The value of the global cigarettes category as a proportion of total tobacco sales dropped below 90% in 2016 for the first time in decades and is on pace to dip to 86% by 2021.

Euromonitor Head of Tobacco Research Shane MacGuill said vapor products and heated tobacco represent major disruptions in the tobacco industry. Heated tobacco product sales are set to grow by $13.2 billion by 2021, making the category the fastest growing in the tobacco industry.

Shares of Altria (MO) , Philip Morris (PM) , Reynolds American (RAI) and British American (BTI) traded mixed on the news.

What's Hot on TheStreet

Well OK then, Jeff Immelt: General Electric's (GE) outgoing CEO Jeff Immelt had some choice things to say at an event in NYC on Thursday night, TheStreet's Kinsey Grant reports. First, Immelt revealed a possibly fatal management mistake Kroger's (KR) CEO might have made about Amazon (AMZN) which as we all know, just inked a $13.7 billion deal for organic grocer Whole Foods (WFM) . Immelt then took a jab at Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for not visiting factories in their push to lift manufacturing wages. Talk about a well-paid boss going down swinging.

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